SciD (Was: Real Close to the Machine: Floating Point in D )

[Don]

Lars T. Kyllingstad wrote:
> Sean Kelly wrote:
>> Walter Bright wrote:
>>> Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>>>> Actually I seem to remember that "Numerical recipes in C" was widely 
>>>> criticized for having incredibly strong restrictions on the 
>>>> published code.
>>>
>>> The license is, from my copy of the 1987 edition:
>>>
>>> "Although this book and its programs are copyrighted, we specifically 
>>> authorize you, the reader of this book, to make one machine-readable 
>>> copy of each program for your own use. [...] Distribution of 
>>> machine-readable programs (either as copied by you or as purchased) 
>>> to any other person is not authorized."
>>
>> I'll have to dig my copy out and see if it's any better.  Really, if 
>> the code can't even legally be used internally for an application 
>> developed by a team of programmers then the book is nearly worthless.
> 
> 
> I wouldn't go so far as to call it worthless. It may not be a repository 
> of freely usable algorithms, but it is a nice textbook that covers a 
> wide range of topics and methods.
> 
> A lot of the algorithms in NR are just their versions of classic (and 
> public domain) algorithms found freely available on NETLIB.

Yes, they basically grabbed algorithms from NETLIB and added their own 
bugs to them.

  So even if
> one cannot write them directly from the book, there are other ways to 
> get at them. What one can't always get from NETLIB are explanations of 
> how the routines work, and why they're designed the way they are, and 
> that's where NR comes in handy.

Even beyond that, the really big contribution of NR was in publicising 
some great algorithms.